Hours after publication of my Aug. 11 article about the substantial rehabilitation of a Williamsburg rental building, I got a frantic email from a reader. The building had been taken out of rent stabilization following the sub rehab and had been charging market-rate rents — a perfectly legal strategy — only for a state regulator to retroactively deny the deregulation. This would devalue the building, for which the owner had paid Jeff Sutton $9.75 million in 2023, and likely trigger a rent-overcharge lawsuit. This sequence of events would wipe out the investment and lead to foreclosure, with the lender selling […]

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